Social Contract on Freedom of Speech

Me being free includes the possibility that I'm going to say something which is going to hurt you personally - otherwise I could not speak out of fear of hurting you, and fear is not a sound basis for happiness.

You being free, however, should also include the fact that your happiness and well-being would not be generally compromised by any individual stating their opinion - otherwise you would live in fear of someone stating what you don't agree with because it offends you personally, defying freedom.

Therefore each of us would do well to attempt to maximize our own happiness and freedom, so that both of us can speak our mind without being in fear of personal offense, never losing, however, the compassion and love and respect, not necessarily for personal views, but for each other as human beings.

Bird's Eye View X

People whose confidence rests upon the fact that they cannot imagine themselve being wrong, cannot adopt another point of view or stand being corrected or challenged, do not truly possess this attribute, but have only managed to delude themselves to a point where adopting any position of humbleness would destroy this important basis for happiness.

That just shows that their confidence rests on a very weak basis, since confidence that is built on strong foundations would never be so sensible as to not withstand challenge, nor depend upon any delusion of absolute certainty.

Why sail?

Why bother?

I won't deny that life seems to be meaningless in of itself.

Each one of us is on a boat which apparently goes to nowhere, sailing on an ocean which we don't understand very well for a limited amount of time; meanwhile, waves strike at us relentlessly. We withstand the first, second, and third waves, and we fear that the next one is the end of us. We see no shore; we see no shelter. So we ask ourselves - why sail after all?

That's an important question, with no real answer. My personal view is pretty much hedonistic - we are capable of feeling joy and happiness, alongside hope and fear. So, in a certain sense, even though we are all sailing on boats, apparently lost, the only thing that makes the journey (any journey) worth is satisfaction, happiness and fun. So let's, each one of us, do with the boat what we see fit.

Some are happy when they find land. A few get used to the land, which is a small world compared to the vastness of the ocean, but it's more than enough for some - and why shouldn't it be?

Some take pleasure by travelling between islands, exploring and searching each island and then going on to the next. They don't fear the ocean, and they take pleasure and are happy while the journey keeps on going.

For me, the highest degree of happiness is achieved when you take pleasure in understanding the ocean. Of course, if you want to understand it you have to spend a lot of time in it; study the waves, try to catch glimpses of their rhythms. This is the closest I will ever get to be truly free. I want to know them as I know myself - so what keeps me sailing is just the pure happiness and satisfaction from knowing something about the ocean. Perhaps I will even get to help someone by discovering something about the way the ocean behaves. Perhaps someone will lose their fear of sailing to other lands, or they will find some joy in this otherwise scary place - I can only hope so.

But in the end, no one has to bother sailing - but many are happy bothering.

It's my boat, and I will take it wherever I want. And if it sinks, and waves strike my body around at their own whim and water fills my lungs, perhaps I will have a last glimpse of their deepest secrets.

I understand infinity, but I cannot contemplate it.

Many people stand in awe of the fact that our brain can contemplate, imagine and understand infinity.
My contention is that we do not contemplate nor imagine infinity, but rather that we understand the meaning of the language, or the definition of the concept. Take the sentences:

'For any number you imagine, however great, add one more', or equivalently,
'There is no highest number'.

We are capable of understanding the meaning of the language behind infinity, but we cannot imagine nor grasp an infinite number of things in our head - we always start with finite quantities, and create higher, albeit finite, quantities. To prove my point further, take the sentences:

'There is a certain species of animal which is different from any species of animal you have seen in the past and doesn't share any characteristics with it'.
'A number can be even, odd, or even another one which I have called plath.'
'A tesseract is the representation of a cube in four spatial dimensions'.

We understand the meaning of each of those sentences, in the sense that there is something to be discovered which we have never experienced - but we cannot imagine what it is in our heads. In fact, we can systematize how to build a cube in four-dimensions, yet we do not imagine it as such - if we hadn't come up with a systematic method for lower dimensions, our brains could not, out of thin air, imagine a four-dimensional cube. This is only to show the point that because we understand the meaning of a certain propositions, does not mean we can imagine what it is we are talking about.

Another point to raise is this: you can imagine hybrid animals, and you can imagine many, many different combinations for each species - perhaps one, two, three, or even more with given time. But can you imagine all possible combinations of arms, legs, hair, eyes of animals with the limited, finite number of species you already know in an instant? And if you add the characteristics of plants to the pool? Probably not. If this is true for a finite number of entities that we know (and this number is already an extremely high number), it should be true for an unlimited number of entities, which is the case of numbers, that can be combined to give additional numbers. We are capable of imagining a set of random numbers, however high, but we cannot imagine an infinity of them.

Our brains seem to be limited by empirical input in order to imagine certain things - a new species of animals, four dimensions, a new color. However, some mathematical/abstract concepts, such as infinity, can be understood, but not imagined - how come? My contention (which I am sure is not an original one) is that we understand the meaning of those concepts not from any empirical input, but from the fact that we have a language mechanism inherent to the human being - this language mechanism makes us capable of understanding logical propositions, or general propositions, without us knowing what exactly we are talking about. I will attempt to develop it later on.

Creativity and imagination are still, nevertheless, the features that take us forward - and who knows, some years from now, certain concepts which are so strange for us in the present are nothing short of trivial for future generations.

The World of Abstract Entities II

* is in likeness of polished, clean glass, with a shine of its own; #, on the other hand, presents itself dirty and reckless - guided by its rebellious, random nature, # soils * with suffering and disgust. Pure as it is, * feels ravished, violated, abused; in the end, it realizes that # - frivolous - will not stop and respect purity - the battle between these two abstract identities begins, only to last a few moments in this hypothetical time.

*, exhausted, loses the fight and shatters in the metaphysical walls of this Universe; it can see pieces of itself spread all over the multidimensional space - pieces so dirty they could belong to the opponent. It wishes to have fought more vigorously to maintain its identity, wholeness and purity; it wishes to have battled with fervor and joy worthy of an immaculate concept who knows and values itself.

(Fragments of ideas wither away / abstractions cease to be) and all is silent.
The dark sky has witnessed, an infinite number of times, the death of imagination.